Things Change
by Sallychan-Stories
Summary: Collection of plot-bunnies on how my version of teenage Edgar and Ellen came to be. Rating may change if I add any swearing, but I doubt that.


All things change, they say. Seasons come, seasons go and all that garbage—and as far as the twins in the tall, broken mansion on top of the hill at the end of a nameless road were concerned,_ hormones_ were the driving force of all of _their_ lifestyle changes. They originally weren't very certain of what to expect of themselves once all of their fellow eighth-graders began growing hair on their face, and tiny bumps poked from the chests of all the girls in the locker room. They didn't have to wait long to find out.

It started with Edgar—or more so, his height. That spring he certainly _sprang_. His clothes began to become very tight on his shoulders and feet, and it wasn't until he and Ellen stood side by side in her greenhouse did it become obvious why.

He was now three and a half inches taller than her.

This of course, complicated some things. It was hard to mend his footie pajamas, but the two managed to sew a handful of his spares into only a few,_ longer_, ones. Then there was the issue of squeezing in an out of tight places. Breaking and Entering became harder, seeing as Edgar would always bump his knees or head when crawling in or out and hiss a quick curse under his breath. His body was apparently not done growing, to complicate things further. He continued to grow through the year, but Ellen seemed to stay at a constant height level with him. It was only that fall when the collar of her pajamas pulled irritatingly at her neck did she realize she _too_ was growing rapidly. The twins decided that night, with much sorrow, that they had out grown their biggest pairs of faded striped footie pajamas, and had to convert them into shirts. They of course, stole some jeans from the lost and found at the civic center first.

Amidst it all, Ellen had pointed out her brother's now darkened, thickened lip hair with harsh torment. All of his sister's teasing forced Edgar to sit in the bathroom late one night and _very carefully_, shave his lip. Unfortunately, his hand was not as steady as he hoped, and he sat through an entire day of Ellen bursting into a fit of laughter at the tiny pieces of toilet paper stuck to his upper lip.

Bathing came next.

The Twins fought the good fight against it, dedicated to their 'once-a-month-bath-unless-under-special-circumstances' policy, but the chemical reactions constantly at work inside them were conjuring up a storm the duo had never dealt with in their youth.

Now, when you're a child, being dirty is easily ignored. There are no oils that cover your skin after a few days, and there are no _places_ that become incredibly itchy and uncomfortable. The Twins did their best to ignore the latter, but one morning when they got up, looked at one another and then screamed to the high heavens was the last straw.

_Acne._

Ellen was completely mortified of the red and white dots that speckled over her usually blank pale face, and Edgar was not fairing much better. One day of absolute ridicule from Stephanie Knightleigh was enough for Ellen to make sure she _never _had the opportunity again. She and her brother (reluctantly) began to shower on a weekly basis, though they bragged of 'only _two days_ a week!' They also very proudly wore their hair the same—drab, dull and _messy _as ever. Then the absolutely unbearable happened—_Ellen _began growing body hair.

Ellen _refused_ this change. She began to shave it away as often as she could, with much more grace than Edgar had. Over a few weeks of infuriating shaving , she decided she could not take this girly hassle a minute longer and demanded Edgar help her with a botanical cure for removing hair. Luckily, Spring Break began that Friday, and they worked ceaselessly on the recipe for the serum. By the third day, they had found a formula that didn't burn skin away, and Ellen has happily used it since. She also took great joy in knowing Stephanie still had to shave, and would snicker alongside her brother when she saw her nemesis's knee with a spot of razor burn on it. Edgar began to try and convince her to let him use the balmy serum, but Ellen refused, saying it was too tiresome to make more for his uses as well. That was, until he showed her his leg covered in dark, curly black hairs and she lurched away from him, pushing the vile into his hands. Edgar happily (and snidely) accepted it as she flailed her arms at him in disgust.

It was around this period in their lives that the worst of all other changes, at least in Ellen's point of view, occurred.

_Menstruating._

At first she assumed she was dying, until it became painfully obvious through her cramps that alas, _no_, it was not death, but Mother Nature's 'blessing', lately bestowed upon her. Again, Ellen rejected the idea of being subjected to typical feminine issues. One ruined pair of jeans and an _unusually _irritable sister was all Edgar needed to be convinced to help her once more. She drug him down to his lab for the second time that spring—this time to create a form of birth control she could 'trust', since she didn't trust a soul in Nod's Limbs. This was a much simpler task for him, seeing as some reliable formulas already existed and all he had to do was make some changes to appease his sister's distrust of society.

After a few months of usage, Ellen's 'weekly gifts' stopped coming at all, making her a very happy teenage miscreant, and in turn, made her brother a very relieved one. Again, she took joy in knowing Stephanie had to struggle through a week of gory Hell once a month, and would snicker snide comments to Edgar when the signs became so painfully obvious.

But of course, this was not the last of changes to come.


End file.
